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"They may not care that I redirect more funding towards more understanding of what happened." You may have more understanding of something, but you have to be

"They may not care that I redirect more funding towards more understanding of what happened." You may have more understanding of something, but you have to be very careful to remember that it's not "what happened". Adding another layer of inaccuracies does not make something more accurate. "In time I will use an artificial neural net and I won't need a gating human. It will paint me a picture of a place and time and its best possible interpretation of the evidence." I wouldn't bet on it. In fact, if you do get an "artificial neural net" to do that, you might want to start worrying about what impressions it wants you to take away.

renewiltord 6y ago
It’s just a machine. People have ulterior motives. Machines just do what you tell them to. People need to worry about their jobs, their ethnicities, their status. Machines don’t even care about replication. There is no silicon gene that drives them. And as for what’s happened, it doesn’t matter that it’s less precise. Every piece of information only moves my belief tensor in some direction. It only has to move me in the direction of what’s happened and it’s already superior to an exact description of what’s happened that doesn’t move me in that direction at all. You overvalue inaccessible truth. And you overestimate historians’ propensity to tell the truth. They have every incentive to lie. And they do. And it works because I suspect you value precision over accuracy. The net result is you have lies told to you by people with a vested interest in you believing a thing. And I, I have a machine that I can make that makes mistakes. But you know what, you take your approach. I’ll take mine, we’ll see who wins in the marketplace of ideas.
- mcguire 6y ago
  If anything, I an overvaluing the error bars on what is knowable. And I know I will lose because the "market place of ideas" strongly prefers the certainty of a comfortable lie.

renewiltord 6y ago

It’s just a machine. People have ulterior motives. Machines just do what you tell them to. People need to worry about their jobs, their ethnicities, their status. Machines don’t even care about replication. There is no silicon gene that drives them. And as for what’s happened, it doesn’t matter that it’s less precise. Every piece of information only moves my belief tensor in some direction. It only has to move me in the direction of what’s happened and it’s already superior to an exact description of what’s happened that doesn’t move me in that direction at all. You overvalue inaccessible truth. And you overestimate historians’ propensity to tell the truth. They have every incentive to lie. And they do. And it works because I suspect you value precision over accuracy. The net result is you have lies told to you by people with a vested interest in you believing a thing. And I, I have a machine that I can make that makes mistakes. But you know what, you take your approach. I’ll take mine, we’ll see who wins in the marketplace of ideas.

mcguire 6y ago
If anything, I an overvaluing the error bars on what is knowable. And I know I will lose because the "market place of ideas" strongly prefers the certainty of a comfortable lie.